Transcriptome analysis of five different tissues of bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.) fruit identifies full-length genes involved in seed oil biosynthesis

Abstract

The bitter gourd seed oil, rich in conjugated fatty acids, has therapeutic value to treat cancer, obesity, and aging. It also has an industrial application as a drying agent. Despite its significance, genomics studies are limited, and the genes for seed oil biosynthesis are not fully understood. In this study, we assembled the fruit transcriptome of bitter gourd using 254.5 million reads (Phred score > 30) from the green rind, white rind, pulp, immature seeds, and mature seeds. It consisted of 125,566 transcripts with N50 value 2,751 bp, mean length 960 bp, and 84% completeness. Transcript assembly was validated by RT-PCR and qRT-PCR analysis of a few selected transcripts. The transcripts were annotated against the NCBI non-redundant database using the BLASTX tool (E-value < 1E−05). In gene ontology terms, 99,443, 86,681, and 82,954 transcripts were classified under biological process, molecular function, and cellular component. From the fruit transcriptome, we identified 26, 3, and 10 full-length genes coding for all the enzymes required for synthesizing fatty acids, conjugated fatty acids, and triacylglycerol. The transcriptome, transcripts with tissue-specific expression patterns, and the full-length identified from this study will serve as an important genomics resource for this important medicinal plant.